


colour light signal

by Amber



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Compulsion Kink, Coming Untouched, Do Not Archive, Light Spanking, M/M, Nearly Getting Caught, On the Run, Oral Cock Warming, Orgasm Control, Praise Kink, Quiet Sex, Smut Swap 2019, Telepathic Bond, Touch-Starved, Unable to Touch, Under desk/table blowjob while others are in the room and unaware, Warped Shows of Affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:43:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: When the Institute falls, Jon breaks Elias out of prison, and they flee by train from London to Beijing. But the connection between them is more volatile than ever.-"Don't," he says sternly when Jon goes to take his arm."You're limping," Jon says quietly."You'recurious about what will happen if you touch me. But don't."





	colour light signal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winternacht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winternacht/gifts).



Elias doesn't particularly need sleep anymore. Hasn't for a long time, though occasionally he indulges — or has reason to pretend to. Never outside the safety of his own domain. So when he wakes sluggishly to the sound of rain on the window and the sensation of travel he's disoriented by the sheer fact that he's waking at all; tries to sit up and immediately feels his injuries protest.

"You're awake."

There's a tape recorder rolling, he can hear it. Elias' eyes flutter open to look at Jon and Jon looks back, unblinking and darkly infinite. His Archivist.

—Wait.

"Jon," he says, and this time he does sit up, heedless of the pain, using it to force himself back to wakefulness. "You need to leave. You haven't — touched me? No, I doubt you'd be so complacent if you had."

"Basira carried you," Jon says, not moving from where he's sat, all glittering fascination at Elias. "Tell me why you've been avoiding me."

Elias winces at the static; it's overpowering, like when pleasure turns so acute and over-stimulatory it becomes painful. On another occasion he might have enjoyed it anyway. Right now it's just another reminder of why this is a terrible idea, and he pulls in a shaky breath from between his teeth. "Did you consider that perhaps I had a good reason? Good enough that asking me in person would be an incredibly stupid—"

The train jolts. The train. A rhythmic presence in the background that had been odd enough to wake him but hadn't quite intruded on his understanding until now. Elias bites back the answer to Jon's question even though doing so feels like chewing aluminum, looks around at their little compartment, and out the window. "Christ, what have you done."

"Fairly sure I've rescued you," Jon says sourly. "But it's all right. Don't thank me all at once."

" _Thank_ you?" It's odd to be on the other side of this, Jon doing what he thinks is right and Elias left spluttering and infuriated. He badly wants to correct the balance of power here. To press into Jon's space as he has many times now and take a crisp bite out of his dignity.

The last time they saw each other was before the Unknowing, Jon pressed face first into his own desk as Elias had rubbed his cock between his thighs, between the cheeks of his ass, using him in the way Jon liked best. Very occasionally the head of his cock had dragged across Jon's hole, threatening to press into him without anything to ease the way, nothing between them but skin, and Jon had given a low cry every time, as much longing as fear.

Jon startles in his seat, looking across at Elias as a scarlet flush begins to creep across his ears. "What was _that_."

" _That_ ," spits Elias, "Is why I haven't let you visit me for the last two months since you woke up." Because Jon needs to focus. Because he needs to receive information at his own pace. Because he's at a delicate stage in his development, newly emerged from his hospital chrysalis. 

Because just being near him leaks Elias' secrets into the air and he isn't ready yet, he isn't ready to expose himself, not even to their god, not even to Jon.

(Beholding loves it, his reluctance. His fear of his own Archivist must be the most exquisitely rare delicacy, the pay off of years of work.)

"So what happens if I touch you," Jon says, always too dangerously curious for his own good.

"Don't," says Elias. "You're not ready for that. It would be —" he fumbles for an appropriate description, finds Jon's metaphor. "An opening of you door. Doubtlessly you'd drown." And then, with a small gesture. "Even simply being in the same place is causing an unnecessary amount of bleed. As I told Basira: a distraction."

"Right," says Jon tiredly, and he doesn't seem surprised to hear Elias has been telling Basira things. "Only there's not much to be distracted from right now, is there?" Just the steady clack of the train beneath them as it carries them onwards. Elias stares across at him, trying to will himself back to calm.

"Tell me what happened," he says, even though he's starting to piece it all together.

"You were attacked," Jon begins.

"Yes. I remember that bit."

"It was part of a coup. Peter and Martin took over the Institute — there was some ritual in the tunnels, I don't really —"

"The door," says Elias, nodding. "Of course. Go on."

Jon's lip curls like Elias' referring to something he doesn't understand has a bad smell to it, and his eyes narrow. "What door." There's a snap of compulsion to it, and Elias shudders visibly in his seat. 

"Stop that," he chastens. "And don't — look for it! Christ. I can guide you, I can support you, but what kind of Archivist would you be if I simply spoon fed you every answer?"

"A less tired one," says Jon, but he lets it go, the leash of static loosened, and Elias' shoulder tension with it. "The point is, Peter, he— I think they were going to try and kill you, and I don't want to think Martin would attack me but— I don't know. He's changed a lot. Whatever they did to the Institute, to the Archives. It didn't feel right. I knew I needed to leave, to get to Beijing or New York and get help from one of our other, er, sister organizations, but I didn't want to leave you behind."

"So you broke me out of prison?" Elias asks, brows raised. Trying not to let any fondness into his voice. 

Jon looks at his own hands where they're resting on the faux-wood fold down table between them. "Basira organized most of it, knew what she was doing. She'd visited you before, I gather." Just a tiny note of accusation there, enough that it's not even really directed at Elias. "I simply... well, it was easier than it should have been." Elias examines his expression, carefully letting himself listen, open just a tiny crack to reach and see if — ah, yes. He'd used his powers.

"You're getting quite strong, Jon," he says, low and pleased, and this time it's Jon's turn to shiver. His pupils flare as he looks at Elias, who allows himself a smirk. For all his wound-tight stubbornness, Jon turns remarkably easy for a little genuine praise. "Yes, you've done very well. Except, of course, for how we're now in prolonged proximity."

"Well, next time I'll just leave you to die and take a plane to China," Jon says irritably.

Elias snorts.

* * *

Elias has spent most of this first leg of the journey unconscious, and it wasn't that long to start with, so it isn't long before they're disembarking at Gare du Nord.

"Don't," he says sternly when Jon goes to take his arm.

"You're limping," Jon says quietly.

" _You're_ curious about what will happen if you touch me. But don't."

It's a shame, really, that they can't simply end their journey here — Elias has always enjoyed Paris, feels an ancestral connection to France, and if it weren't for some of the quirks of his position he would have doubtlessly visited more often over the years. But they have another train to catch, and this one runs far less frequently.

Jon doesn't speak French. Elias does, of course, but he isn't the one who can simply command others to action, make staticky demands for information. Fortunately Jon doesn't seem to have noticed the language barrier between he and the station guards, just arranges their boarding.

They have only a tiny little compartment on the Trans-Siberian railway — there was no shortage of funds to arrange their passage but they need to keep people from noticing Elias, asking about his non-existent papers. It's easier to keep him somewhat hidden than convince the train guards that he has a valid passport at every border between France and China. So it's third class, Elias on the top bunk and Jon in the berth below, trying to sleep in these narrow spaces while the train around them rolls steadily onwards.

"What are you doing," Jon asks, looking up from where he's rooting through their single piece of luggage. 

Elias continues unbuttoning his suit. "I am fairly sure you didn't bring me a change of clothes."

"Funnily enough, I didn't," Jon agrees waspishly. "I can loan you a couple of things, but I barely packed enough for myself. You'll just have to live with a little grubbiness for a week."

"Of course." Elias manages to sound diplomatic and not put out at all. "But if that's the case, I'd rather preserve this suit for when we reach the Pu Songling Research Center. Appearances, and all that. I'm sure you understand."

Jon stares for a moment, as Elias begins removing his crisp white shirt, then forcibly pulls his eyes away to look down at his hands. "Right," he says. "And you're planning to what, go naked in the meantime?"

"Would you enjoy that?" Elias asks, tone almost believably sincere. "No, Jon, but I think my underwear will do while we're avoiding company." He folds his shirt neatly, and soon his trousers join them in a neat square on the shelf at the end of his bunk. Elias stays in his singlet and briefs, reclined like an insolent god as he watches Jon not looking at him, and smiles.

"If it so discomforts you, perhaps you can steal me a robe from first class," he says.

"You're not making not touching you any easier," grouses Jon, retreating, perhaps wisely, into his own bunk.

Elias chuckles. "Oh _aren't_ I," he murmurs lasciviously, because even the idea that Jon wants him in any particular way is delightful.

* * *

In the night, this close, he dreams Jon's dreams, and the gaze of his master upon him/them is glorious scourge, a knowing to the bone, flayed open.

He can't tell which of them wants it more.

* * *

The first day, Jon leaves for breakfast in the dining car and returns with a fairly acceptable array of leftovers. Enough that Elias wonders if his Archivist is eating as much as he should be.

The second day, Jon returns having taken sustenance from less tangible things.

Elias can feel it, the renewed strength of him. It makes him louder, pulls their connection taut. Jon must be able to feel it too, but he just swears softly to himself.

"May I have the tape?" Elias asks, because there must be a tape when there are always so many recorders.

"You weren't _listening_?" Jon sneers, and Elias sighs. 

"I'm afraid the signal to noise ratio has afforded you some accidental measure of privacy from me, Jon." Because he hears statements all the time, a soft sussurus of voices chorused, like the ones he had Martin use to call Jon back. Some are thoughts and some are memories and some are the intrusion of their god, but with this many none of them is individually discernible.

Jon seems surprised to hear this, and Elias wonders if he was furtive, guilty, expecting voyeurism as he gave in to what he needed. What a nice thought.

"Fine," he says, and gives over the recorder. Elias listens to it in his bunk, Jon and one of the train guards — he'd compelled the man initially, he discovers, as part of keeping their cover, trying to blackmail him into more food, delivered to their compartment. But the story he got of the worst thing the man ever did was a tale of snow and darkness, a Russian winter and a stopped train, a vast emptiness and a terrible beast.

He misses the written statements, Jon's chocolate voice.

The man does agree to anything Jon asks for, after that, though, so Elias tells him, "Very well done," silkily, and can feel the way that reverberates in his Archivist's chest.

* * *

They stop at a station in Novosibirsk, a bright mint green cake of a building, strange to look at alongside the practical dullness of the railway lines. Elias leaves the train for the first time since Paris, takes the air a little, stretches his legs.

They can leave the room now, with the help of their new acquaintance, and that should be a relief but instead it gives new opportunities to accidentally touch, brushing together as Elias dresses or in the narrow corridor, each time sparking something vivid. 

Elias knew about several of his Archivist's exploits over the years, but now he receives them with full colour definition and surround sound. Long bristle-black legs emerging from a door. The hot wax give of Jude Perry's hand enveloping his so that their skin melts into one another. Martin with a voice as flat as a room without an echo, muffled and deadened, explaining that this needs to happen to save humanity, Jon, you understand, don't you?

None of them are things he _wants_ to know, particularly, aside from how he wants to know everything of Jon, but the unwilling thrust of learning is as enjoyable to the Eye as the rest of it, so he submits. 

What's worse is the fact that Jon is knowing from him in turn, learning things that have him looking at Elias with disgust or worse, quiet pity.

"Stop that," Elias snaps at nothing, pushing roughly past Jon and heading to the breakfast car with the taste of thick gritty dirt upon his lips.

__

"Why is this happening," Jon asks him on the fourth day as they sit opposite each other in the little booth, Siberia sliding past outside in a featureless blur of golds and greens. He sounds tired. 

"You're becoming a god," Elias says simply, then corrects himself: "Well. Demi-god."

Jon shakes his head. "I don't believe they're deities. Not anymore."

"Then perhaps say — you're growing closer to our Master." Elias adjusts the cuff of his sleeves. He's dressed himself properly again, in his single suit, for this emergence into the public eye.

"I don't even know what that means," protests Jon. "Closer how? Certainly not physically — but how can it be _in me?_ How can there be room?" He's tired, and overpowerful, and careless, and Elias' teeth are starting to hum with the tinfoil chew of static. "And it's not just Beholding, it's you. Why—"

"Stop," says Elias, gone pale, gone still.

"Why is it just _you_ that's such a- such a bloody distraction all the time?"

The question whispers like a skimmed razor across Elias' skin, reaches choke-deep down his throat and grabs, squeezes, pulls. He slams his hands flat on the table, neck straining. "Jon."

Jon scowls and looks him dead in the Eye. "Elias."

Truth is too close, as the static of compulsion washes through him. It's like awareness of electricity, it's like the zap of an orgasm before the pleasure hits, it's like an autonomic shiver at a good piece of music, it's like touching god. Elias is hard in his pants instantly, and Jon is strong now, so strong that not answering takes everything he has.

"Elias," Jon says again, louder, sharper, and he's about to ask something too personal, a weakness Elias can never come back from admitting, and he's terrifying and beautiful and—

"No," says Elias.

He slips under the table and onto his knees, finding a zen kind of comfort at organizing his limbs into the cramped space.

"You can't possibly—" Jon tries, voice high and scandalized. " _Elias_ , this is a public car! There are— other— oh, lord."

This last in response to Elias' hands at his flies, opening his trousers and helping Jon go from his briefs straight to his mouth. Soft and small like this, Elias can take the whole thing. He holds it there reverently, feeling the twitches of pulse beneath his tongue as it starts to thicken and uncurl. He imagines Jon's face above him, flushing with the twinned pleasure and embarrassment that Elias so loves to bring out in him. Compulsion is still washing back and forth through him like waves, but his mouth is full of Jon.

Besides, isn't this a kind of answer in its own way? A kind of capitulation?

From beneath the table, he can hear the sound of the carriage doors opening even as Jon sucks in a sharp breath, and then the metallic thump-thump of the tea trolley entering. It rolls down the aisle with a clatter of cutlery and porcelain, pausing a few booths up from them to serve someone seated there. Jon's thighs have gone rigidly tense beneath his soothing hands.

"Get up," he whispers insistently to his lap, trying not to get caught. "You can't—"

But he's terrified of drawing attention by talking so he cuts himself off. Pulls the tablecloth further over Elias' head, and then takes his napkin from the table and shakes that into his lap too. All remarkably naturally given he's getting so hard that he's nudging at Elias' throat.

Elias isn't even sucking, not really. He just holds Jon in his mouth, closing his eyes and letting the circumstances do all the work for him while he kneels and works through answers he still can't give Jon: because I love you. Because I worship you. Because you're going to use me, we will use each other, and reshape the whole world. 

No. No need to scare off his Archivist just yet. Instead he breathes, and kneels, and if Jon can feel any of that between them unspoken, it must surely be drowned out by arousal and embarrassment and sheer panic as the trolley approaches their table.

Breakfast for one. Jon makes haphazard choices, the strain in his voice audible, but manages. When the waiter moves on he reaches down and grips Elias' hair, pulls it startlingly viciously.

"You are a menace," he hisses.

The dining car is filling up, so Elias makes no move to emerge. Just stays where he is until Jon sighs in disgust and lets go of him to eat his breakfast as best he can manage. Elias enjoys himself by, at inopportune moments, sucking like a vacuum, or slowly easing back to tongue the head before taking him deep again. He never quite lets Jon get all the way soft again, but he certainly isn't stimulating him to orgasm. Jon, after all, has a tendency to be loud.

By the time the wild urge to spill everything over has passed, most of the diners have left again, and Elias feels no compunction about returning to his seat, patting his swollen lips with his own napkin, demure.

"You could at least have finished me off," Jon points out, voice all rough heat. 

"We would have been caught immediately," Elias says, to make him blush — successfully.

He helps Jon finish his meal. But. When they return to their little compartment, Elias simply climbs up onto his bed again, fascinated to see what Jon will do, what he'll demand. Jon looks at him, dark-eyed and intense, and Elias looks back. All mirrored surfaces, as always, invulnerable to his Archivist's penetrating glare. Perhaps one day Jon will learn how to properly subjugate him into line, and Elias has no doubt he'll enjoy every moment, but until then there's simply this, his Archivist angry but helpless, resigned, climbing into his own bed and flopping into his back with a huff.

* * *

They do not have much longer left on the train.

"Do you think we'll get the Institute back?" Jon asks him, at some indeterminable hour of darkness. They are both awake, and they both know the other is awake, despite this being the first words spoken since they went to bed.

"I'm sure the research center will have made the necessary preparations," Elias says. Because there is really only one way to truly reclaim what is theirs, now. That Peter chose to no longer support Elias' plans, proceeded with his own... well, that is unfortunate. But Elias planned for that possibility. Elias does his best to plan for every possibility.

It isn't always possible, of course — he's not omnipresent yet — but he generally knows how to follow the path of possibility and game theory to an outcome he prefers. Peter likes risk. Elias prefers to simply win.

"You can't win all the time," says Jon, and Elias realizes that they're now sharing without even touching, bleeding into each other around the edges. 

He doesn't hold out very much longer after that.

* * *

Despite his keening and the desperate clutch of his hands, Jon is soft when Elias finally rucks enough clothes aside to get his cock out again. More bare skin on petal soft skin and he can feel the humiliation of it whispering through Jon into him. That he wants to connect with Elias in every way possible and hates that what should be easy, what always seems easy for everyone else, is never so for him, and he— 

"Lovely," Elias breathes, interrupting this torrent of self-aggrandizement with a sharp nip to Jon's jaw. "Such a beautiful cock, Archivist." He rolls it slowly between thumb and forefinger, teasing the head, and it twitches. "Yes, that's it. Filling your cock nice and big for me."

"I'm hardly," Jon protests, strangling on his own fluster. "It's— I'm not—" It's not like he's choosing to get hard, there's just something about the tone of Elias' voice, the humiliation of his praise slotting magnetically alongside the humiliation of his disobedient cock and making it all feel warm and good. Jon feels small, and vulnerable, but trusting — so Elias can feel it too, and rewards him with kisses and the steady pull of the handjob. 

And maybe Jon can feel in turn that Elias is ferociously turned on, wants to take his time in worship. _Likes_ how slowly Jon gets there, how he responds to cruelly sweet words like nothing else: "You're a slut for me and only me, Jon," Elias murmurs.

"Yes," says Jon, lips parted, arching needy.

Elias whispers to him, secrets spill between them, and he hurts Jon — just a little, just with tweaks and bites and the drag of his blunt nails. Gets his cock full and hot and positively dripping from the tip.

And then he stops.

The annoyance he gets in return is delightful, and Elias laughs aloud, kisses him fondly. Feels Jon's fondness in turn, hidden but there, stoking his arousal as much as the pain and the praise and the rest of it. Still, he doesn't get aroused like this often enough to know what to do with it, tries to grind against Elias and is denied. Until Elias feels more than measures that he's calmed down just enough to resume. 

"That's it," he encourages, and, "Lovely, you're so lovely." because that word seems to have a direct line to Jon's dick. They kiss until Elias' lips feel sore and Jon writhes and gasps and makes noises he'd be embarrassed about if he were in his right mind and— 

Of course Elias doesn't let him come.

This time Jon reaches for his own cock stubbornly: "If you're not going to then I'll do it myself."

Elias chuckles and wrenches his arm away from its target. Pins Jon easily, far stronger than he looks, rubbing idly against him while he fumbles off his necktie.

"If you can't behave," Elias says, "I'll just have to help you."

Jon doesn't really struggle as Elias binds his arms at a brutally strainful angle, so perhaps this is all he was after in the first place. Elias cinches tight and kisses his shoulder with a satisfied, "There," and Jon tests the restraints and groans.

"Prick," he mutters vituperously, but Elias feels the wash of arousal and affection that comes along with the censure and just laughs.

"I'd watch how you speak to me," he says silkily, sliding his fingers down Jon's abdomen to the root of his cock, angling it downwards to be pet. "If you want to be allowed to come."

And because Jon can't possibly ever do anything except make things worse for himself he scoffs. "That's hardly much of a punishment." 

Probably he's right. Jon lacks a particularly heated sex drive, might grouse but after a cold shower he'd be fine, would have enjoyed the teasing just as much as he would the release. Elias can know that, now, like it's his own understanding instead of some slippery subtle overlap where their skin touches.

"I suppose I'll just have to find a better one, then," Elias says.

* * *

Even with the neck-tie leashing Jon's arm's Elias has to get rough to get him where he wants him, Jon struggling the moment Elias' plan bleeds through. But for all the mental and physical changes his Archivist has undergone, gaining unnatural strength isn't one of them, so Elias has an easy advantage there. He forces Jon face down onto the narrow bed and unbuckles his own belt, folds it over on itself to make a loop.

"I'd like you to apologize for your disgraceful tone," he informs Jon silkily. "And then I would like you to beg me to let you come. Get creative there, if you're so inclined. I do so enjoy promises made in desperation."

"Elias please—" breathes Jon, and Elias tuts.

"No, not yet. Punishment first. Then the apology and the begging. Otherwise how do I know you mean it?" As if to emphasize his words, he brings the expensive leather of the belt down, enjoying the loud crack, the way Jon squawks in indignant pain, the mark that immediately blossoms in its wake. When he does it again Jon's cry sounds shoved out from his chest. 

Elias takes a moment to improve their position, to maneuver Jon properly over his lap, and then he goes to town. Doesn't bother with structure or making Jon count, doesn't count the stripes himself, just flurries pain across Jon's skin with glorious sadism. It's almost uncontrolled — except for how precise each whip-stripe is. Except for how his muscular arms never quite hit harder than Jon could actually take. 

"I'd wager this arse has never seen sunlight in its life," he muses, just to be mean, and Jon likes that as much as the spanking because he's a disgusting little masochist, writhes and whines.

Elias gets his apology, and his begging, but doesn't stop tormenting Jon until he comes under the belt, untouched. Tension snaps him taut as he tries to hump Elias' thigh, and then the orgasm rips through _both_ of them, as if firing off one synapse and across to another body all together.

Elias has been hard in his trousers since he knelt for his Archivist, but he hadn't been anywhere near finishing. And yet — Jon goes over the edge, and Elias goes with him, bound. Gasps out a curse as he feels the warmth and wetness spread across his groin, dick kicking helplessly with each pulse of come. The feeling undulates back and forth between them, stoked to greater heights for mere moments, before Jon finally goes limp, panting, done. 

Elias rubs a palm idly over his welted ass. It's bright red, but there's no blood, so if Elias broke the skin it wasn't for long. His Archivist is so sturdy now. Yet Jon hisses and then lets out a rough sob, like this stinging soothing pain, so sweet in the wake of his orgasm, is just too much all together. "Elias," he croaks hoarsely, and it commingles through their bare skin, not just the sex but everything — Elias' dark reverence, Jon's reluctant fascination, his hope for a better world, Elias' plans for a new one— 

Jon _seizes_ on that and hooks it, drags it into the light, like a hair being pulled long and disgusting from Elias' throat. So much for the goddamn afterglow; Elias has barely caught his breath and suddenly he's being unceremoniously ransacked for his Archivist's curiosity about the Watcher's Crown.

"So it is a ritual," Jon says, sounding hoarse still. Elias smacks his ass with his palm and Jon jolts and makes an open noise but doesn't stop what he's doing. "Crown. Corona. I can see the connection, but— Elias, how do either of us survive that?"

He's sitting up now, careful with himself, and his eyes are wet and his limbs relaxed to slowness and there's come sheeny on his thighs but he seems to have forgotten about all of that. His brow is creased as he gives Elias a hard stare. "And that's your plan to retake the Institute from Beijing? It won't be the same. Nothing in the world will be the same."

"You won't be the same," Elias corrects him. "But I think all the little people who work for us, and around us, they'll go on as they always did." And since they're here, albeit not in the circumstances he was hoping for, he may as well place the cherry on the sundae. "Martin could be freed."

Jon clears his throat, looking down. Blames himself for that loss, of course, as he does for every one of them. Gertrude had hardened her heart to it by the time Elias knew her, so it's a refreshingly easy way to manipulate his Archivist.

(Well, that and the painful truth. That beneath the constant struggle they care about each other.)

"Enough of this," Elias says brusquely, to that end. "Come here." And Jon does, and Elias wraps him up on the narrow little bunk and kisses him until something mistrustful in Jon eases despite himself.

* * *

Despite everything, Jon is exhausted with sex and the taxing overwork of his powers, so he sleeps, for once, with whuffling little snores, spooned back against Elias' bare chest. So deceptively human. Wide awake, Elias listens to the rhythmic clack of the train and walks alongside him through another cycle of dreams, like a man running a possessive hand over a collection of valuable items he holds dear. Elias doesn't particularly need sleep anymore. Hasn't for a long time, though occasionally he indulges — or has reason to pretend to. Never outside the safety of his own domain. 

But that's getting closer now. Elias can feel the Research Center in the distance, so similar to a connection that had winked out when Peter betrayed him. It is waiting for them, for him to inhabit it, for Jon to use it. The Watcher's Crown will be made ready, even if nobody called ahead. Beholding's people know.

Elias doesn't consider if this will ruin them — this is simply a culmination of what's between them in the same way that sex is every time Jon gives into it. He refuses to be afraid, or consider if this is what he wanted when he joined the Institute all those years ago. To worry if Jon will still occasionally smile tiredly, at a cat or a stupid pun, if he'll still shiver when Elias touches him, if he will bleed.

No. Pointless to linger on an inevitability. Elias kisses the back of Jon's neck and, deciding here like this he's as close to safe as either of them ever get, allows the train to rock him to a dreamless, silent sleep.


End file.
